But Mourinho says he is ready to rest players because his priority is to triumph in Europe because silverware is what counts.

The United manager said: “If we beat Celta Vigo, we go to the final and, yes, it is important to us to play Champions League, but this club wants trophies.

“We cannot give the club the Premier League. We have a 25 per cent chance to win the Europa League.

“I will rotate players again to give some players a chance again. In terms of expectation, it is better to go into a derby with one point difference rather than four.”

(Image: Jan Kruger)

Mourinho also challenged the injured Phil Jones and Chris Smalling to accelerate their comebacks to give Eric Bailly some help.

“Bailly was incredible,” he said. “If I was Smalling or Jones, I would play Thursday. I wouldn’t accept one guy to play nine matches in a row because I am injured.

“If they have a crazy mentality like I have, they will play. If they are safe thinking and they are surrounded by people with the mentality they have, they will need more time, they will be more cautious. If it was me, I’d step up to play.”

Mourinho admitted he was gutted to see Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Marcos Rojo sidelined with cruicate ligament injuries.

“The injuries are really big,” said the Portuguese. “No player deserves to be injured. These two cases are even sadder because for Zlatan, in this phase of his career, it is really, really hard.

Wayne Rooney celebrates scoring (Image: Man Utd/Getty)

“Marcos was probably in the best moment of his career.”

Defeat leaves Burnley in relegation trouble, despite their best-ever Premier League points haul of 36, and boss Sean Dyche says they cannot rely on other teams doing them a favour.

Dyche, who lost Ben Mee with a shin injury, said: “Our challenge is points on the board. When you look historically, we are in good shape.

“There is still work to be done regardless. You can’t expect to rely on others. We don’t. We know we have four big games coming and we want to take on all four.”